1931 Census of Canada - C, B, or F?

It's been a few weeks since the the Seventh Census of Canada, 1931 was released to the public and people are actually starting to really pay attention to what is recorded on the pages. One question has started to pop up on the various Facebook genealogy groups summarized along the lines of:

What do the letters written between the birth places of the father (column 16) and mother (column 17) mean?

 

1931 Census of Canada, Ontario, district 126, sub-district 16, Grantham Township, p. 1, extract of columns 15-17;digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 Jun 2023); citing Library and Archives Canada folder T-27276.

Here is an example from a page in the Lincoln census district for the Township of Grantham. We can see combinations of letters like "CC", "BB", "BC", and "FF". Even more interesting is that the handwriting is different from that of the enumerator. These letters are found not just on one page but on all the pages and in various handwriting.

This is where we need to do some thinking and analysis plus consult the various reports generated out of the statistics from the 1931 Census of Canada. Plus a bit of guess work.

Remember, a purpose of the census was to create statistics so that the government could understand how Canada has changed since the last enumerator and to help in future planning. Sometimes the information recorded on the forms needed to be simplified so that the folks doing the tabulation in the Dominion Bureau of Statistics could do the data entry to count the details. Such is the case for grouping where the parents are born. We saw these similar types of notations in the 1921 Census of Canada. But at least this time the statisticians kept the extra comments to a minimum on the form.

I started with the theory that:

• C = Canadian Born
• B = British Isles Born
• F = Foreign Born

The "C" was easy since for any parent born in a province or territory that made up the Dominion of Canada in 1931 I was seeing the letter "C".

The "F" was also just as easy since I was seeing it for all sorts of countries. Even if the birth country recorded for a parent was listed as "Unknown" it had the letter "F" assigned.

However, the "B" was interesting since my samples of the census were primarily taken from Ontario. I was seeing England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales all with a "B" code. However, I needed to get a better sample. For that I turned to the Vancouver-Burrard enumeration district in British Columbia. Why there? Vancouver, being on the coast, and the west coast of Canada at that, might have a more cosmopolitan population makeup. I chose Vancouver-Burrard just because (no real good reason, honest!)

Very quickly I came across a parent born in Newfoundland. There the code was "B".

Hmmm...Newfoundland wasn't a province or territory of Canada in 1931. Yet it also wasn't part of the British Isles. Then I found a father born on the Isle of Wight coded as "B". As I kept looking on the pages I came across a mother born in India with the letter "B". Next a father who was born in Australia also had the letter "B" beside his country of birth. Same with a parent born in South Africa. All in the first sub-district in the Vancouver-Burrard district. I guess I chose wisely.

Could "B" stand for British Subject¹ other than a Canadian born person? It certainly seemed that way.

However, as I was looking in sub-district 2 I came across an entry where it was written "N.G." for "Not Given" for the parents' birth place and there was a comment stating the person was absent and they were in England. The letter code associated is "N". There is always at least one anomaly to add to the confusion.

In that same sub-district I stumbled across someone whose mother was born in the West Indies and the code was written as "B".

The next place for me to look was in the various reports for the Seventh census of Canada, 1931. I looked in Volume 1 to see if they had something along the lines of birth places of the parents. In Chapter VII of the "Analysis of the Main Subjects of the Present Census and of Part Censuses of Canada" section starting on page 227 of the report (233 page of the PDF) the title is "NATIVITY OF PARENTS". There they use the terms "Canadian", "British", and "foreign". In reading the mentions of  "British" and not seeing certain countries mentioned in various tabulations throughout the report listing "Foreign" countries it would seem to me that "British" meant the person was a subject of the British Empire excluding Canada.

On page 232 of that same volume there is even a table:

Dominion Bureau of Statistics of Canada, editor, Seventh census of Canada, 1931, 13 (Ottawa, Ontario: J. O. Patenaude, I.S.O., 1936), 1. Summary. p. 232 (https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.832354/publication.html : accessed 25 Jun 2023), "Proportion of Different Classes of Parentage."

So now I believe the codes and their meaning we will typically find, excluding the "N" for not given, for the birth places of the parents are:

• C = Canadian Born
• B = British Subject¹ Born excluding those born in Canada
• F = Foreign Born excluding those born in Canada or as a British Subject

This gives us the combinations of:

• CC = father and mother born in Canada
• CB = father born in Canada, mother born as a British Subject
• BC = father born as a British Subject, mother born in Canada
  
• CF = father born in Canada, mother born in a foreign country
• FC = father born in a foreign country, mother born in Canada
• BB = father and mother born as a British Subject
• BF = father born as a British Subject, mother born in a foreign country
• FB = father born in a foreign county, mother born as a British Subject
• FF = father and mother born in a foreign country

 

As an aside, if you haven't read the "Administrative Report on the Seventh Census of Canada, 1931" by The Dominion Statistician that can be found in volume 1 starting on page 29 I'd highly recommend doing so. He has written all about the history of the census and even talks about why Canada uses the de jure method of recording where people reside. He provides all kinds of cool facts.

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1. Initially I had this written as "British Empire" but after thinking it over and with some feedback I've changed this to be "British Subject" as a short way of stating "subject of the British Empire". Keep in mind that someone being a British Subject extended beyond the British Isles and included the nations, dominions, colonies, and protectorates under the rule of His Majesty King George V.